DRM-free EPUB books in the same reader as saved articles

Books in the browser's download folder: a novel from a shop that sells DRM-free copies, a classic from the public-domain library Project Gutenberg and, further down, the workbook an author attached to a course email, still under the file name it arrived with. None of them is locked to an app, because an ebook without DRM is a plain file that opens in whichever EPUB reader the laptop has.

Articles live somewhere else. You save them to a readlist as they turn up, then open that list when there's 20 minutes free and pick one that fits.

The book in the folder isn't on that list, so it doesn't come up when you pick.

A novel bought months ago stays in Downloads while you read the articles saved after it: 2 essays on sleep, a profile of a chess coach and a 15-minute piece about why old steel bridges rust.

Readplace takes that file at readplace.com/upload and puts the book on the readlist as a card, next to the articles. It opens in the same reader they do.

Out of the Downloads folder

The Choose a file button on the upload page sends a logged-out visitor to sign up or sign in first. From there, the page takes 1 file at a time, picked from wherever the browser saved it. It answers with the line "Your file is uploaded" and a Continue button.

Continue is where Readplace checks the file before anything reaches the readlist. A PDF renamed to .epub stops there, and the page says it isn't an EPUB.

A card that counts chapters

A file name like workbook-final-v2.epub in Downloads says nothing about how long the book takes, which is what someone with a free hour asks first. Neither does its size in MB.

While the book is being prepared, its card reads "Preparing your book…". When it's ready, the card carries a Book badge and a line such as "Book · 24 chapters · 6 h 19 min read".

The chapter count includes every document the EPUB lists in its reading order. A title page stored as its own document adds 1 to the count.

The read time uses the same 238 words a minute as an article card. A 90,000-word novel works out at 379 minutes, which the card shows as 6 h 19 min. A 2,500-word essay comes out as an 11 min read.

Both the 6 h 19 min book and the 11 min essay sit in one list, measured in one unit.

Chapters as sections on a single page

Someone reading a novel in 20-minute pieces, after dinner or before sleep, wants to get back to chapter 12 without scrolling past the first 11.

The book opens as a single long page: a table of contents at the top with 1 link per chapter, then each chapter in order under its own heading.

The headings use the titles from the book's own table of contents. A chapter the book leaves unnamed gets a name by position, such as Chapter 3.

A link in chapter 2 that points to chapter 9 jumps down the page to the start of chapter 9's section. Links out to the web stay as they were.

The reader's header has no Original link, because no web page sits behind a book.

Private to the account that uploaded it

A book opens only for the account that uploaded it. Anyone else sees "Private upload" where the title would be, and none of the text.

That suits files not meant for the public, such as a workbook sold to a course's students or a draft an author sent to early readers with a request to keep it to themselves.

Delete, in the card's menu, removes the book and the uploaded file with it. Deleting the account removes every upload it made.

Neither touches the EPUB on the laptop.

If the book has pictures

The upload page says "images are not shown yet", so a novel arrives without its cover or the map at the front and a cookbook without its photos. The novel still reads fine. A textbook that explains with diagrams loses those explanations.

The same line on the upload page reads "MOBI and AZW3 are not supported", and the page turns away a file in either format before it reaches the list.

A DRM-protected EPUB gets through the upload and stops at the card, which says the book is protected by DRM and asks for a DRM-free copy.

The current limit is 200 MB per file. When a file under that limit holds a book too large for the reader, its card says so.

Reading a chapter between articles

An evening of reading on paper can split this way: a long magazine piece from the coffee table, then a chapter of the novel on the nightstand. At 20 minutes a sitting, the 6 h 19 min novel comes to 19 sittings.

On the readlist, a novel is a long read that happens to have chapters.

That EPUB from months ago, still in your Downloads folder, goes through readplace.com/upload onto the list you pick from.